


hold out your hand

by thethrillof



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Monsters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Cuddling, Video Game Mechanics, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-20 03:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14886447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: Humans are made of solid matter and Determination. Monsters are made of magic, and hope, and love.Turns out there's different kinds of monsters out there, made of other,strangerthings.As if that's going to stop Frisk.





	1. Chapter 1

They’d kept away from the studio’s threats well enough—they’re a fast runner and a great dodger, and there were dozens of places a kid as small as Frisk could wedge themselves into. Most of the strange monsters seemed to forget what they were doing after a few minutes and moved on, letting Frisk slip away with ease.

So, naturally, the first real confrontation they have is an accident on both their parts.

Frisk rounds a corner, paying more attention to keeping their rainboots from disturbing more of the inky puddles lining the halls, and walks facefirst into one of the smaller ones hard.

There’s a loud  _clunk_  as something in the creature's hand flies from its grip and hits the floorboards.

Frisk had seen the somewhat-humanoid one with the gaping mouth and some kind of tool in hand; they’d fled from the one with an unsettling eye and more-terrifying mouth atop its head; but as whole as its bottom half was, this one was definitely the weirdest, a head swinging on a line instead of attached to its body in the first place. Their first fleeting look at its squat body and odd shape throws their thoughts to Woshua. ( _Wosh would hate this place,_ they've caught themselves thinking more than once already.)

The hanging head bumps right against Frisk’s chest. Reflexively, their hands snap up and  _grab_  it.

 

 

They hadn't gotten close enough to the silent monsters to actually _touch_ them with their bare hands before. Frisk freezes as they absorb a few sensations:

The sort-of skin feels like a wet sponge forgotten in the sink overnight, squishing slightly under their fingers. Kind of gross. (Not as gross as playing with Endogeny, though.) It smells strange, too—the reek of old ink that permeated the entire studio is overlaid with a mildew-y scent, and then the mildest hint of...huh. Sea Tea? No, just salty water.

And then, Frisk absorbs that the creature’s nearly frozen, too, beneath their touch. Its overlong arms keep swinging back and forth, but otherwise it stays where it is. Its one obvious eye, the one that looks like a button, tries to twitch up and focus on their own.

It doesn’t seem to know what to do now. Same as Frisk.

Lots of things tried to kill them here—but lots of things tried to kill them underground, too. (And did.) They managed to befriend most of _those_ monsters. These ones are certainly different, but maybe... _maybe..._

Well, they’ve already SAVED, even if it was a while ago. And they can still turn and flee if it tries anything. This one probably won’t be any faster than the rest, right?

After a few moments of a staring contest, Frisk mumbles a slight apology, carefully releasing its face, and takes a small step backwards.

They see what the fishing-pole-head creature dropped, now—a wrench. They sort of expect it to turn and try to pick it up after its head stops swinging.

Instead, it seems to shudder, making its lanky arms and line swing even harder, and steps forward.

Frisk nearly turns and runs right there, ready for some other sort of attack, like the gaping-mouth ones in the ink puddles do.

But they're curious. That curiosity keeps them still just long enough.

It bumps against their chest, again, rolling to press the side of its head against their sweater, the weird pipe-shaped nose pressing slightly into their arm. They grunt in surprise, but allow it, just shifting their arm so it doesn’t dig in.

The Fisher follows their movements, getting even closer, until its head is outright pinned between their arm and their side, practically in their armpit. (Ew.)

Frisk takes a moment to give it a few more lightly-squelching pats. They’ll just have to work out how to disentangle themselves, figure out the next step to lead to MERCY so they can keep going--

 

And then

 

_it talks._

 

Garbled, twisted, a growl barely sounding like a word—only experience with visiting surface-adjusting Amalgamates while they were distressed to help calm them lets Frisk decipher what it says.

“ _Cold...”_

Frisk goes still.

It draws itself even closer. _“Pirate’s cooold,”_ it says again, confirming that it can talk. _It can talk._ A surprise bubble of indigence rises beneath their disbelief--the  _rest_  of them didn't talk when Frisk tried to make conversation before!

Cold. They mutter a stupid Snowy pun under their breath.

The Fisher’s head _is_ cold. The whole studio’s cold, all the ink they’ve had to wade through and walk through, even with their new rainboots and worn-but-warm sweater. Everything is cold...

...Except them, apparently. They haven't seen anything softer down here than paper or those tiny demon dolls, either. It's probably being more docile 'cause Frisk is just comfy. Perfect height to cuddle and warm up.

They can’t let it stay there forever, though. They’ve got to find their friends, or at least somewhere they can get a signal to report what the ‘monsters’ of the Studio are really like, for more backup. They need to figure out how to make it leave them alone...

...or maybe not.

They hum low in their throat, pulling their hand away. It shudders again, but doesn't try anything else. Alright, that's good.

Next, they take another step back. Its head starts slipping away from their sweater. With another garbled growl, it shuffles forward to keep itself where it is. It absolutely doesn’t want to lose them.

Okay, then. If it was any of the others, they'd probably have more trouble, but Frisk's sure they can work with this--

They quickly let go again and turn their back, offering their other arm instead. It takes the space again with a more obviously irate noise, but that's okay--now with it tucked under their arm in the direction they _want_ to be going, they have more control, carefully maneuvering the head into the crook of their elbow.

There.

Frisk looks down at it and wonders aloud if it wants to come with them.

It doesn’t answer. In fact, reflecting back, they're not sure if it can _hear_ in the first place. It certainly responded more to their movements than the sounds and words they've made so far.

...That's alright, too. 

They step forward, slowly, and it only takes a second for the Fisher to realize this and step along with them. And then another step, and another, with the Fisher’s body trailing just a little behind. Almost like walking a dog, they guess?

Even for them this is incredibly weird, but honestly, it's nice to have proof that these monsters can still be gentle.

 

 

 

Invisible to everything but them, a light flickers to life. 

 

*** Finding your first friend in this inky hell...fills you with determination.**


	2. Chapter 2

While the inky pipes are a special kind of creepy, they’re also a blessing in disguise. Every time they need to take a corner blind, or knock a bit of wood out of place, or carefully step across a creaky floorboard, the flow rushes and groans loud enough to drown them out. Even in the quietest places before they found Fisher, they could keep the sound of their footsteps from being heard above the waterfalls and ink pools lapping over rotting wood.

They slow from their already-careful pace until they stop beside first ink-fall they find, one of the many weird sets of drawers abandoned throughout the facility casting a shadow across them. Their sounds will be unheard to the other, less-reasonable monsters, but maybe…

They tip their head down, closer to Fisher’s. Once they’re certain it’s not going to get angry, they try to talk again, into the thing that looks like an ear on the side with all those…boils. (If that’s what they are. They kind of look like the gross things they find in bowls around the place, like fungus—but they don’t want to think about that right now.)

Direct questions, first. Then few facts about their friends, the Surface. In a moment of nervous tension, they even sing a few lines from Mettaton’s most recent hit, notes carrying down the hallways.

(Maybe the sound of nothing but ink is getting to them more than they thought.)

And nothing. No response to their words, at any rate. For a little while, they find themselves taking their time just looking at it. The neck is really weird, even for a monster, and they can’t tell if the fish is real or not.

Frisk could be being too judging. Monsters can be visually weird, they’re monsters! Made of magic. And something terrible obviously happened to all the ones hiding down here, in this abandoned animation studio to make them so _aggressive._ No doubt something human-related, a suffering almost all Surface-surviving monsters share.

Eventually, it tugs its head back--Frisk lets go immediately, ‘cause feeling the line go taut makes their skin crawl, like they’re going to pull its head off--though it returns only a moment later, once they deliberately turn their gaze away and to the broken pipe above. Soon after they do that, it nudges its head under their arm again.

(Doesn’t like staring. Okay. Important note to self.)

They’re not really surprised. They just…hoped. The whole situation would be easier if the real problem was only their volume.

At least the time they got looking the monster over more carefully gave them a chance to notice something else important: _**‘LIAR’**_ scrawled on its belt. Either Fisher wrote it or someone Fisher knows wrote it, which means they can communicate with _somebody_ down here.

It should be easy to test the first part, but this weird place makes everything complicated. The pipe flooding the hall, they’re staring right at it, so close it can nearly splash them, and there's still lots of room on the walls to draw letters, but they can’t use it. Dipping even their pinky in might wake more of those blob ooze monsters with the silent screaming faces. Those ones won’t leave them alone unless they run and hide for a while, and they  _can’t_ run with Fisher unless they let it go, and they aren’t going to risk that unless they absolutely have to. What if one of them gets lost?

Frisk is an actions-over-words kid, and communication is important. The fact that the Fisher is following and is gentle, and even that it resisted, means it can think; they have a chance to work something out even if they can’t write, too…but that has to wait. Getting somewhere safe is a priority.

They take a deep breath to steady themselves.

Immediately, Frisk’s face twists, and they barely catch themselves before they stick out their tongue in revulsion. All musty and inky and weighted with an unnatural heaviness, the air itself tastes gross.

They gently tug at Fisher to start following again, wishing they’d brought more food down with them. They’d seen lots of cans of some kind of soup, but they looked kinda rusty. Frisk has low standards for what they’ll eat, but ‘low’ doesn’t mean ‘none at all’, even if they could use something to wash out the air’s flavor right now--

 

_**CRACK.** _

 

Frisk slams to the floor with a cry that only makes their face explode with worse pain, eyes burning with ink and tears and stars. Something hit them, something so fast they didn’t have a chance to know what.

When they can see again, they’re staring up at the monster with the horrible  _teeth_  on its head, jerkily aiming an extending fist for another strike.

Their arm unwinds from Fisher’s head so they can clutch at their jaw where it hit, barely-coherent thoughts clunking together into a grumpy gratefulness that they just did a SAVE, ‘cause by how much one punch is hurting that probably means that another will just cave their head in.

Their ears take a spike of pain instead, a roar bursting from their side.

Fisher isn’t fast, but it throws itself forward and takes the punching-teeth thing by enough surprise that Fisher’s head knocks it against the wall with a heavy  _thump._

Own head still ringing, Frisk’s hands hook on the set of drawers, sliding open enough for them to drag their body upwards, dizzily slowly.

Ink taste’s gone, replaced by the scraping tang of blood. They rest their head against the wood and guess that’s a little better, actually. Tastes more real than the dead air somehow. They think a tooth is loose, but they’ve got lots of baby ones that need to go anyway. Better than biting _through_ their tongue.

They belatedly register that they fell, but they’ve done that enough it doesn’t seem important as the hit to the face. Everything else about them seems okay.

Frisk’s eyes slide back over to the thing, the  _striking_ thing, and they find themselves staring stupidly as they register what they’re actually looking at: Fisher, not screaming anymore, but using its head to bludgeon the other monster while its many hands try to cover its own face.

There are little flecks of black coming off it to pepper the wall and floor.

 _That_ jars them into action, stumbling forward to grab Fisher by whatever they can reach--

Frisk’s fingers close around the edge of the jutting sail-thing. Fisher whirls with another nasty noise, but their heart is pounding with adrenaline on top of pain, and they let go and leap back to dodge another violent head-swing, this time aimed right at their own chest.

The drawer they’d pulled open is still open, right there. At a second swing, panic and instinct has them stumbling against t, and then scrambling straight  _up_.

The top’s a functional enough place to perch on, though the space is small, wood feeling uncomfortable and easy to splinter. Plus, now the waterfall of ink is right next to their ear. Can’t stay up here for long.

Frisk peeks back down.

The punching-thing—the Striker, they decide—is standing up, though now it’s listing to the side, somewhat away from Fisher. Oddly, it isn’t trying to run or fight back. It hasn’t lost track of Frisk, either, though it seems undecided what it should pay most attention to; them, or the monster that attacked it?

Desperately trying not to look at the head-teeth, Frisk focuses on whatever else they can.

From above, they can see how weird its arms actually are. The arm they thought was only a single one is actually two, with one wrapped around the back of its body to be jammed together with the metal around its arm and fist. There are weird crooked teeth sticking out of its better-placed mouth, and one of its eyes seems painted or somehow drawn on. It doesn’t have a belt, and it almost looks like there’s a third mouth around the front of its stomach. Frisk can handle the sight of that one, since there aren't any gross teeth they can see.

They could run, maybe, but that feels like a terrible solution. They don’t want to leave the monster behind despite the sudden backstabbing, and they don’t want the Striker to get beaten to death either.

Once its head stops swinging, Fisher stops grumbling too, eventually taking its own head between its gloves to aim and take look at Frisk, to which they give a betrayed glare in return.

It wasn’t the same as with Flowey, they can already tell. It felt too sudden to be planned, and it was trying to help them not get hurt.  _Something_  happened. Still, their body aches from having to get away so quickly, and the Striker doesn’t seem to know what to do, either, and they don’t trust it enough yet. That punch hit them from pretty far; they’re not going to rush back down to the floor too quickly.

“ _Cold…_ _?”_  Fisher slowly says, realizing that something’s gone wrong.

Frisk doesn’t budge, shaking their head. It can’t hear them, but they speak up anyway just because it makes them feel less helpless. They’re not coming down if they’re going to get beat up again. That’s against the rules! They already spared it! Fighting them again is  _cheating!_

The Striker is definitely staring at them now.

“ _No, no,”_  Fisher says, letting it’s head swing free again. Hands move and press against its chest in the small space above the belt-sign.

That’s right. 'No' is right.

Frisk shakes their head again, harder.

“ _No? No…”_

Striker flexes its hands, starts moving forward, and Frisk doesn’t miss how one of the feet twists like it has a broken ankle. Did Fisher do that too? Maybe it tripped trying to run before.

Striker doesn’t stop until both monsters are standing side-by-side. Frisk’s shoulders set, wondering if this is going to turn into another fight. Between both monsters or preparing a team-up to get up and go against Frisk themselves. Either would be terrible, or at least really annoying.

Only it doesn’t. It just…keeps looking at them.

Frisk shakes their head at it too, and repeats themselves. They don’t want to get hurt, okay. They don’t want  _anybody_ to get hurt.

Fisher doesn’t speak anymore, just getting closer to the drawers and reaching out both arms. It falls so short of reaching them, it could almost be funny.

Could be. Maybe in another situation. Right now, it’s nothing more than pitiful.

Striker does a funny shuffling in place, good eye glancing up and down between Frisk and Fisher.

An uncomfortable near-silence follows. Frisk considers their next step.

…Striker looked up when Frisk spoke. Maybe…

Frisk aims their eyes at it and tells it _not_ to fight. Once. Twice. Three times, they repeat themselves, and then gesture with a hand-flick and tell it to back away for good measure. Frisk doesn’t want to fight. And it doesn’t want to get into another fight with the Fisher--with the other monster, right?

Fisher strains its hands, knocking its head against the wood trying and failing to get to them.

Striker is bumped by the back of that sail. Frisk holds their breath as it flinches, but Fisher doesn’t even seem to notice in its futile persistence.

The punching-monster turns and limps away.

Not far, just on the other side of the ink-fall before it turns to face them again, and maybe even one of those attacks could reach them anyway if it tried…but that’s not so important, now. They were heard. It understood. It  _listened_.

Frisk probably scared Fisher with their sudden touch, and they have a better sense of it liking them and their warmth than whatever Striker does--it probably still thinks they’re  _a threat--_ but they can handle that, too, even with a chance for another attack. At least they’ve got a start of a method to deal with this even if they…lose.

The wood feels incredibly flimsy beneath their knees.

_Okay._

Frisk exhales and slips back down. By now they’ve gotten good enough at taking calculated drops that it doesn’t really hurt when they hit the floor a little too hard on their feet.

Just as they expected, Fisher immediately jams its head against their arm again. Not so expected is that it does so a hoarse cry of something like fear.

Frisk sneaks a glance up from beneath their hair at Striker to make sure it’s not winding up for another punch, but it stays where it is, watching the interaction intently.

Some guilt rises and twists in their chest at the sight of both. They’re incredibly gentle with adjusting Fisher to be more comfortable, though the head’s probably less delicate than they thought, being used like a wrecking ball. That or it doesn’t care about getting hurt.

With greater purpose, their mind cycles back to food. They have a couple of chocolate-chip cookies they’d helped mom make, just something they’d grabbed on the way out. This was supposed to be a short outing, and now it’s everything but.

It should heal a monster, though. It’s  _monster food_. They were going to save it for an emergency--

Frisk glances at Striker again.  _Fisher_  wasn’t the one with weird black wet stuff (weird dust? weird _blood?_ ) coming off of its body.

Concern and instinct has them aiming shielding Fisher’s head from seeing Striker...before they softly, gently, call it closer.

It looks them over with its eye a few times, clearly uncertain, but it comes when they call one more time. The gait isn’t as slow, but yes, it’s definitely limping a lot.

It stops in front of them, a few steps back. It leaves Frisk in punching range, but they can’t reach it in return. It’s a tiny bit taller than they are, and maybe it actually can’t hear them so well with smaller pustules around the things that look like ears. The head-teeth are still hard to look at, but there are others--

_Wait._

**Wait.**

Cold spears them to their core. Their self-control is in a stranglehold, keeping them from gasping or making a sharp move, and they’re lucky for that because oh, god, those aren’t crooked fangs sticking out.

 _Striker_ _has stitches through its lips_.

This whole studio feels awful. The monsters, how they look and how they act, remind them of the True Lab, except worse. Alphys had best intentions, she’d tried to help, and it was an accident.

Not everything that happened here was an accident at all, was it? And now they're starting to think absolutely nobody, nothing down here is _helping_ at all.

Striker doesn’t miss where their eyes are. They stiffen when its hands come up, but that’s only to cover its lips with the upper set of gloved fingers instead.

Frisk turns their gaze to the side. No staring.

…Striker still has some kind of mouth, though the lower part is just a shape. Frisk desperately doesn’t want to acknowledge the top set, but they sort of need to now. It probably can eat, or it’d be dead already, right? Monsters starve, even if it takes longer for that to work than for humans.

Frisk pulls one of the cookies from their inventory and holds it out in offering, still not looking. They really don’t want to see what eating through the head looks like.

Take it, they say. It’s food, and it’s really good.

_Don’t look. Don’t look._

The flowing ink drowns out the noise of it coming closer. They almost flinch when the cookie is lifted from their outstretched hand.

_Don’t look don’t look don’t look don't--_

Frisk counts the ink-pumping machine noises in the walls like heartbeats until about a minute’s passed.

When they look up again, the cookie’s gone, and Striker’s right beside them on the opposite side of Fisher, looking at them sideways instead of straight on.

Alright. Good. They think.

Quietly, they tell it that they’re looking for friends, and a way out. Does it want to come too? Or…does it know somewhere safe to go?

They jump when it makes a noise—distorted and awful, entirely unexpected—and points down the hallway. They guess it came from that way.

Then they’ll go that way, they say. Will it show them?

A deliberating pause. Then it jerks its head back-and-forth, once. 'No'.

…Okay. That’s fair.

Frisk thanks it and goes.

Only when they get far enough from the ink-fall, they can hear footsteps. When they take a look backwards, the Striker is lurking just a little behind Fisher’s trailing body.

They hum a short note.

Well, that’ll work better than having to physically hold it, they guess. And at least now they know any more words they decide to speak will get caught, even if they still won’t be answered.

 

* * *

 

Behind Frisk’s back, the clumsy creatures accidentally bump together, ink brushing against ink.

Rudimentary thoughts, the first new ones in literal lifetimes, brush together too.

Both still hurt, but both always hurt. Anger is lost, fear is dampened. Warm is good. Warm is the only good.

Fire contained enough to get close. Stuffy places where the pumping machine parts don’t rattle teeth or drown out everything else in a terrible way.

In the darkness even the warm can turn and be bad, awful, painful. The warm of cut-open guts and burning volts puncturing through everything; warm is bad when it’s inside.

But this…

This is warm, inside and out. Warm that’s better than warm, warm that doesn’t want to hurt. Warm that--

 

(is safe)

 

\--they can’t grasp with something greater than hands.

Something that the creatures that can barely think agree: they will not leave it.

This small warm is theirs.

**Author's Note:**

> original lineart commissioned from [slightly-gay-pogohammer](http://slightly-gay-pogohammer.tumblr.com/post/174431299871/an-incredibly-adorable-commission-for), and coloring done by goodbyenorthernlights! ♥


End file.
